


Prologue: "All you have is your fire..."

by cosmics (Cosmics)



Series: ashes in my wake [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: AOTC-TCW timeframe, Help, I don't know what I'm doing, eventually more characters will be added, like padme and other people, more of a poem-y style of writing, starts out pre-aotc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 19:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2400134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmics/pseuds/cosmics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the beginning of the end. Mox Howes can only fight the darkness for so long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prologue: "All you have is your fire..."

**Author's Note:**

> The title and summary are from Hozier's "Arsonist's Lullabye".  
> Also I have no idea what I'm doing. Written in a more poem-like sort of style.

I was born on Coruscant,  
and never stood a chance.  
They had me  
the second I was two standard years.  
I was born and raised for this.  
My whole life was spent here  
in the Temple,  
halls lined in gold,  
and I’ve never known anything else.  
I’ve always belonged here.  
But lately I’ve been seeing blacks  
and reds and deep oranges  
and maybe I’m  
not  
meant to be  
here  
anymore.

Master Yoda told me to meditate  
but when my eyes close  
the backs of my lids  
dance with anger  
toward the people that raised me.  
So cold,  
so unfeeling.

As a padawan now  
at the age of sixteen standard years  
I am in the field with other learners  
and no Masters.  
Anakin Skywalker  
sleeps in the tent next to  
the one Quinlan Vos’ padawan and I have set up.  
They are both older than me.

I am on first watch.  
It’s raining  
and I hear the pattering on the tent  
and I see it through the screen.  
I like the rain.  
Anakin seems to hate it  
and it’s almost certainly because  
the rumors are true,  
that he comes from Tatooine, the desert planet.  
Not much else has been said about him,  
other than the whispers that  
he’s the Chosen One  
and that’s why they let him in  
even at nine.  
He has said nothing about it.  
We’ve barely spoken to one another.

And Vos’ padawan, Aayla Secura  
will be a Knight soon.  
She is a well rounded student  
and very capable.  
She listens to her Masters.  
Her brush with the dark side  
has only made her a better Jedi.  
I am not like her.  
I will not make it out of this inner battle better.  
I only get worse.

A disturbance in the Force  
shoots my head up abruptly  
and I suddenly know  
what is wrong.

Someone is here.  
Someone whose Force signature I do not recognize,  
someone who feels off.

I push out of the tent and onto the campground  
with the heavy weight of my lightsaber  
in my hand.  
Once lit,  
the blade looks darker than usual  
in the dark night,  
mocking me with it’s reddish glow.

A dark figure,  
as they always are,  
emerges from among the trees,  
as they always do.  
His hood covers his face  
under which I can see nothing  
other than the glow of his yellow eyes.  
A Sith.

He reaches his hand out  
and the rain stops from above us.  
This feat is particularly difficult,  
something I could never master while training with my Master.  
He is deflecting every raindrop as it falls  
with great concentration.

He speaks my name,  
“Mox Howes,”  
and the voice is not masculine.  
The Sith is female.  
I do not speak.  
“Mox,  
what a pity.  
Look at you;  
your weaknesses,  
your inner struggle.”

I twist my lightsaber in my hand,  
ready to leap.  
The Ataru form focuses mainly  
on offense,  
and that is certainly what I need now.

The Sith keeps her head down.  
She does not move to draw her lightsaber  
or into a fighting stance.  
“You are foolish to think  
you can defeat me.”

“I shall try.”

The Sith lifts her head  
and the first thing I notice  
is the vertical scar on her cheek  
about an inch in length.

The ground falls out from under me.

“You shall  
lose.”

My voice, my scar.  
My face.  
Me.  
But not me as well.

I am  
doomed.

 

**///**

 

Aayla’s face is worried.  
She leans over me  
and her hand  
burns  
through my tunic into my shoulder.  
Anakin stands over her  
and his gaze is less worried  
and more familiar.

“You had a  
nightmare.  
That’s all,”  
Aayla explains in the  
calm  
voice of a Jedi.

I flinch from her palm.  
“Jedi don’t have nightmares.”

The rain still patters outside  
and I am still  
far away.


End file.
